Format

• We’re reading 2-3 chapters a week (some are very short). I’m going to be shooting for 50-60 pages a week, give or take. I’m going to be getting page counts from the libgen ebook, so that’s why readings will be done by chapter.
• Hopefully we’ll be done in 7 or 8 weeks
• Feel free to get whatever copy you wish, I’ll also post onto Perusall for your convenience and highlighting.
• I’ll plan to post on Wednesday each week with the readings we’re discussing and our future schedule as I work it out. I’ll also @ mention anyone who posts in this thread in future weeks.

Resources

• Libgen link to an ebook here
• Here’s Bevins’ appearance on Trueanon, which is part of why I wanted to do this book club
• Perusall – if you want to flag passages for discussion, I’ll do my best to check this before I post my weekly post. If people would prefer, I can also make weekly assignments here, but I’ve opened up the book for access in an assignment or whatever.

Previous Posts

Week 1

Week 2

Chapter 5

• Short chapter on some movements in the west - Occupy, the movements in Spain and Greece. I feel like Bevins already has made it clear he’s more skeptical of these movements in the imperial core, but is perhaps radical consensus (98) a serious barrier to expanding the movement?
  • Follow up – is this a weakness of prefigurative politics? I’m thinking about that post from the_dunk_tank on Graeber from a few days ago, and are there perhaps limits to prefigurative politics’ material effects?
• “Discursive Shifts” (99) produced by Occupy, etc., but no real material change. Is this a consequence of the imperial core? Design of cities, suburbs, etc? Thinking forward to BLM, was 2020 the same story, but perhaps even more present to the reactionary mind?
• P. 100 - Libertarians for pot, but not willing to engage police, name a more iconic combo. But seriously, we see again a vanguard model in Chile, versus the less effective Brazilian occupying - I feel like Bevins’s arguments for a vanguard continue to remain compelling.
• We have our first appearance (by my count) of Anonymous. While I love all our posting soldiers here, how “useful” is a digital hactivism strategy? Feels kind of like vaporware (especially with things like wikileaks, etc.) not doing much, but perhaps there’s places for stuff like this?
• Chilean model – aligning student activism with indigenous activism feels like a really cool strategy, and perhaps are there intersectional/solidarity movements that could be produced in America/the west? Or is this something that just works in the subaltern/developing world?
• “She’s hot” (103). Should we be finding our hot comrades? Is hasanabi thought vindicated here? On a more serious note though – we need hot people who also have disciplined messaging, and I’m thinking back to that one moderator of /r/antiwork that kind of blew things up by being a terrible messenger. Public facing people have to have skills, I think, is the main takeaway here, and then being hot of course doesn’t hurt.

Chapter 6

• Twitter brain, the chapter. I think the techno-liberation critique has been done before, but any thoughts on Bevins’s analysis here on 106-108?
  • Decentralization, on its own, doesn’t really disrupt, I think is the takeaway here, but any other key payoffs?
• Two great sickos on page 109 with Sullivan and Kristoff. I was also kind of taken away with the 2009 twitter, and thought maybe something would happen from it (started grad school in 2010 and really was kind of on the border of drinking the kool aid. Stepped away, but seeing this reminds me of a younger me…)
• 110 – this page hit hard. “You cannot have Rwanda again because information…” I call bullshit just on the grounds of Gaza today.
• Also, things can always get worse (“situations even worse than the governance of a stable authoritarian state…”)
• Seeing these techno-optimist takes (“The Che Guevara of the 21st Century is the network”) really fucking kill me. Coming from Hillary Clinton’s state department as well, anyone else taking psychic damage here? I think that seeing the inner mindset of the imperial machine here – their embrace of this stuff – suggests that there’s real hard limits on their material/revolutionary effects, but maybe the master’s tools can be used to dismantle things?
• We also begin to get the reaction to the movements in Egypt - consolidation and the organization of the right against more “liberalizing” forces.
  • Electoralism appears to take a bit of a L here – any thoughts on what could have been done in Egypt? It also feels like a place where typical “liberal” electoral reforms (ranked choice) might have fixed things but voters are weird freaks
• State department and “Gay Girl in Damascus.” The psyop stuff here is rather bleak, and I really don’t know what to do since my own personal position online is to radically accept people’s self-claimed identities, but this stuff is just very classic internet. Bored graduate students larping, the real thing that ruins online discourse. What is to be done about this, I honestly don’t know…

Chapter 7

• This chapter is very bleak to me – the role of cops and paramilitary forces in Brazil really starts to show the forces of reaction churning up.
• 118 - the “embarrased right” thing reminds me of the “permanent democrat majority” thinking in America post 2008. Why is this kind of teleological thinking so appealing to liberals?
• Putting it another way – how many times do we have to teach this lesson about reactionaries, old man!
• The deforestation and getting caught as cost of business (119) is really bleak. I think of all the posts from the official pod of the community about wage theft and firing unionizing employees as well – much of this stuff is already priced in. Can we use the administrative state at all to try and agitate for space for organization, or is this an “accelerationists proven right” kind of scenario?
• We see the arrival of conservative/evangelical reaction in Brazil (122). We all know the marxist critique of religion, but I wonder why the prosperity gospel took root in Brazil, since at least some Catholic countries have adopted liberation theology modes within their left groups.
• The anti-urban stuff feels very “15-minute cities” and I wonder if Raymond Williams’s analysis of country/city might be relevant here…
• At the end of the day, this material reality (killers hired to clear land) seems like something you can’t really fight with the internet. I feel like seeing the right’s willingness to employ violence here really reminds us that Mao is not wrong about power…

Chapter 8

• Shifting to Turkey now, the inciting incident is the transformation of the urban space (demolition of a cafe and theater). On the one hand, it might feel like this is less immediate than a guy setting himself on fire in protest, but there’s something more universal about it I think. However, in the imperial core, there’s so few of these places left – the process has basically run its course and there’s just Starbucks instead of the local shop. However, I feel like these battles are still worth fighting, if only because there’s been dive bars, pubs, and cafes that have loomed large in my life…
• I should note there’s also another even more immediate concern with the defense of green spaces by environmentalists. I do like the way this protest draws together several groups, but I feel like there’s a missing class… the working class, no?
• 127 – I think that here we see the “good” side of twitter, allowing for a bypass of state media, but it just feels like such a shitty version of what could be (and perhaps I’m looking with hindsight of 2024 twitter). Still, it feels like it’s important to recognize the role of state media and the Consent Manufacturing Machine in the west as well – I feel like Bevins misses a comparison here.
• Another great historical dive for Turkey. Not going to say much here except that it’s great to have all these glosses.
• 129 - weakening the military and strengthening the police seems like something to always watch for. Interesting that this appears to have been part of their “liberalization” though…
• We also see here the role of the Saudis in positioning Turkey in the Syria conflict, as well as a player in Egypt and other countries post-protests.
• 2013 – we have unplanned protests in Turkey that are drawing crowds and eyes. I think again, the question we should ask, are where are the “hinge points” in this protest movement, since each of these starts with what I feel like are really positive goals/causes. What goes wrong, I think, is what we need to keep watching for.
• One good thing is the immediate formation of a kind of hard core – the “Taksim Solidarity” organization seems like a smart move, but I think horizontalism runs into some hard structural barriers again (who is part of this org…)
• A strategic question – what’s the “line” for groups we should try to broadly engage/incorporate into a strategy of protest/revolt, and where’s the line where you kick out nazi scum? Obviously nazis, but what about (for instance) pro pot libertarians? Any more hardcore MLM’s got any thoughts on this? Or Ancoms? While solidarity is easy on Hexbear, I feel like this illustrates how hard it is IRL and I’m wondering what is to be done? We don’t want to (especially at a hinge point) be so purity focused that we discard useful liberals, after all. Are the Anonymous mask trolls useful in the moment? Where’s the line, basically?
• I will say, perhaps some of this also reflects the bougie nature of the Turkish protests.
• Sports culture – this is actually an insane twist i wasn’t ready for. Any thoughts on ultras/hooligans? I wonder if there’s a way to build more committed leftist sports groups, as well.
• I appreciate the Castro shout out, and I do think not all sports need to be reactionary, so this is very cool.
• What can the “petit-bourgeoisie cultural fair” do to better support the hard core people fighting on the front lines of protests like this?
• It feels like real human connection comes from being fucked up by cops together – is there any way to forge this though without violence? Class consciousness is just so hard to create…
• “the language was nearly identical” – the similarities here are provocative – were the material conditions of neoliberalism allowing this, or is it really something unique to Twitter?
• 134-5 - we love to see the intelligensia/PMC coming to the defense of the regime here, absolutely disgusting stuff (and more and more common – love that Gaza consent manufacturing)
  • The use of the language of the left to shore up the right is definitely a key feature of these protests as well…
• “Who represents us”? This is a key question the chapter ends with, and perhaps again a structural limit of horizontalism…

Next Week: Chapter 9-11 (ending right at the end of Part 1)

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